


Haunt

by stilesinwonderland (itsabravenewworld)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsabravenewworld/pseuds/stilesinwonderland
Summary: “Oh my god,” Stiles says, staring at the colorless floor. “Are we ghosts? Are we dead?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! It's certainly been a while. I plan on moving some of my fics from tumblr over to here, but if you'd like a rebloggable version, please check out my blog (it's also stilesinwonderland). 
> 
> Anyways, I had a lot of feelings about fate and about ghosts. I hope you enjoy!

Stiles wakes up feeling nothing.

There’s no whooshing of the wind from his opened window when he usually wakes; he can’t hear any animals outside or his annoying neighbors mowing the lawn. He can only register some kind of technical whirring, a constant buzz in the back of his mind that doesn’t fade even as he comes awake. As he tries to sit up and grab onto the nearest item, he finds that he has absolutely no feeling in his skin at all.

He also can’t see anything. “Shit,” Stiles curses when he takes stock of everything around him because he seems to have fallen asleep (passed out? Been stuffed?) in some sort of a closet. As he blinks, a dim single light bulb flickers on above his head, shifting with an invisible wind. There’s a broom to his left and some buckets and his foot is actually in one of them, but his sneaker isn’t even close to damp despite it being full of water.

There’s a weird dull ache in his chest as he hauls himself out of his sitting position on the floor. His phone isn’t in his pocket either, and when he checks the door with a wiggle, it turns out to be locked. “Hello?” Stiles tries hitting the wall with an open palm, but when his hand makes contact with the plaster, no sound comes out. He uses more force and there’s still nothing.

“Hey!” Stiles shouts. “This isn’t funny, let me out of here!” All of the details of everything are almost too sharp, too fine, giving him a niggling feeling at the back of his skull. He yells a little more to try and get someone’s attention, but there is no response. “What is going on here?” he whispers. If he was being held hostage, there would be someone watching him and they would at least _hear_ him. Unless they’re really bad kidnappers.

Stiles turns his body to lean against the door in defeat, but his body falls faster than he expects, legs going out from under him, and he slams to the ground with a high pitched noise. There’s a flash behind his eyelids, but he can’t register much else besides the fact that now he’s fully acquainted with the hard floor.

When a touch brushes his arm unexpectedly, Stiles twists his head and opens his eyes but he can’t quite see past the bright lights in the room. He tries to blink to see who has opened the door from behind him, but then he’s being tugged up by his biceps and he tries to flail his way upward to either fight or get his ass handed to him.

Stiles gets a quick look at his own abdomen as he goes up and he has– _no legs._ Because his body is going directly _through the door_. As in his legs aren’t even visible because there is a wooden door halfway through his body, like he’s suddenly been chopped in half. But he’s moving so fast and being manhandled into standing by someone with rough hands, that the thought is nothing more than a slap to the face.

The guy has got a huge build, a light beard and is wearing a plain t-shirt displaying some heavy muscleage (Stiles tells himself that’s why he had been able to lift him so easily). The guy looks white as a sheet as he looks over Stiles’s form. He’s extremely, _extremely_ good looking. And he doesn’t look very happy.

“Who the hell are you?” The pale mouth moves quickly.

That stops Stiles short. He shoves the guy’s hands (large and weak at the same time) away from him and backs up towards the wall. Looks him up and down. “Who am _I?_ Who are _you_? Why was I locked in a closet? How did you know I was even in there? I mean,” Stiles shoves his fingers clumsily through his hair, because the guy looks confused as hell, “thanks for letting me out and all, but I don’t know what’s going on.”  

The guy looks like he’s about to throw up. He’s seriously sickly-white.  His eyebrows jump slightly as he jerks his chin towards the door. “I didn’t let you out. I…” He freezes and stares intensely at the wooden door, “you fell through the door. It’s still locked.”

Stiles glares at the guy who by all means looks kind of terrified _._  Scared as hell is not as good a look on him as angry is, but it makes it easier to scoff at him. “Through the door, right. I thought I saw that too, but you had to have opened the door.” He doesn’t feel like thinking about the fact that the guy seems to have seen it too, because Stiles is freaking out enough already.

“I didn’t open the door, I swear.” And the expression is innocent enough in itself without including that tone, the really earnest one accompanied with hands splayed out like he’s calming a skittish animal.

The quiet laugh that bursts past his lips sounds hysterical and hyena-like and the guy’s broad hands aren’t helping much at all.

Stiles takes his hand back and grabs at his own chin, feeling cold and silky-soft skin, like smoke. His hands are blurry from his panic anyways but he has to _check_ so he tries to count his trembling fingers (he’d read on a website that you can’t count fingers in dreams and it’s the only thing his mind can focus on).

They’re all accounted for.

There’s some place in the back corners of his mind that say he could still be dreaming anyways, but with his vision swimming, there’s nothing much he can do but kneel on the ground and try and hold his own head until the buzzing fades.

“Are you okay?” The voice fades in slowly. Stiles can feel that he’s purposely keeping his distance, and his voice is dry and cracking, devoid of much emotion. Stiles stands up from his kneeling position slowly, shaking his head, and the guy says, “What’s your name?”

When Stiles doesn’t respond, his voice comes again, like a whip, “ _Hey_ ,” with an angry and demanding tone. Whatever he’s attempting to do must work; it break Stiles out of his reverie. Stiles stares at him and he widens his eyes expectedly. “Your name.”

Stiles clears his throat. “Stiles.” With that, he takes a hesitant look towards the door, and damn his curious brain, extends a hand towards it.

The guy makes a light sound of alarm from behind him, and a hand snakes up to brush his shoulder. “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t–” Stiles tugs free, and thrusts his arm forward because he has to _see– “Stiles.”_

Halfway up his hand, Stiles’s skin has disappeared beyond the wood, and he can’t see the rest of it, even though reasonably, it should still be there. There’s no pain, but he can feel his fingertips moving beyond the wood on the other side, and he jerks his hand back. The fingers squeezing his shoulder falter, jerking free and when Stiles looks around the room, overwhelmed, Derek has backed up towards a chair leaning against the wall. Derek stumbles away when his foot goes right through the leg and he blinks down at his own body.

There’s the panic, and in the absence of his heart beating there is just a feeling of dread that is almost suffocating. “Tell me this is a dream,” he asks anyways, desperate, “Tell me I didn’t just move through the door again. Tell me you didn’t just do that. The _chair_.” He can’t even think to mention the fact that he can’t _feel his heart_ (it should be going a mile a minute) either, at all.

“I can’t do that,” Derek tells him in a less angry tone than before. He is still staring at his own legs, and Stiles follows his gaze to Derek’s shifting feet.

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, staring at the colorless floor. “Are we ghosts? Are we _dead_?”

–

“This isn’t _so_ bad,” Stiles claims eventually. It must have been a month or so since they popped up here, and Stiles has become quite accustomed to his gloomy company.

Apparently Derek has had the opposite experience. “I could be with my family when I died,” he muses, “I could be anywhere, but I’m stuck here with him instead.” He’s glaring up at the ceiling as if cursing the heavens. “He keeps walking through me.” And that had only happened _twice,_ because apparently even they can phase when they’re not paying enough attention.  

Because yeah, they’re ghosts. And they can’t remember anything from before.

“Hey, it’s not like I _chose_ you either,” Stiles tries his hand at floating as he speaks because that’s apparently a new thing for them. When their vision had become a bit more fuzzy, their feet stopped touching the ground completely unless they forced themselves down. He hovers just a bit and slinks over to Derek, going for ominous. “I don’t really know what we’re doing here with each other.”

Derek throws a hand out. “Obviously I wasn’t patient enough when I was alive.”

Stiles frowns in mock offense. “Hey, dude, not cool! I could be with my dad right now–” He’s punched with a sudden weight in his stomach and he lands hard on his feet. Derek is actually looking his way now, with something like concern. “My dad?”

“Your dad?” Derek says, blinking once.

–

“Okay, so I’ve got it, we have to try and remember things about us.” Stiles propositions. He sits cross-legged on the floor and this time it’s harder to stay down than it is to float.

Derek is pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why do you propose that?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. He thinks about the sinking feeling when he’d remembered his dad. He can’t recall anything else besides that he has one, but for the first time, he had felt close to normal. “Because I think it helps us stay human. Okay, it helps us stay _less ghost-like._ Don’t give me that look; I’ve seen a lot of movies that have ghosts turned to demons because they lost their humanity.” Just thinking about movies settles the weight back in his stomach again.

He hears Derek mumble “I’m in hell already anyways,” but then he’s leaning forward, leaning an arm against his knee. “Let’s say that’s true. Do you think I haven’t been trying to remember about myself? I can’t think of anything; it’s no use.”

“You know, maybe you died because of your negative attitude,” Stiles says.

“Maybe _you_ died because you never _shut up.”_

Stiles turns to face towards the _other_ pale and blank wall. “Wow, that really burns.”

Looking back at Derek, his stomach twists for some reason. They share a look and then Stiles turns away again, crossing his arms across his chest.

–

They don’t really sleep. There’s a time of day where everything is in a fugue state and even Stiles doesn’t talk for long. The lighting never goes dim, and the mechanical whirring is still always there, but it’s in the back of his mind most of the time.

There’s a table in the middle of the room, but they can’t sit in the chairs, and there’s nothing to keep them entertained. Derek seems content enough staring at the cream-colored walls and brooding, but Stiles bounces off the walls after no time at all. Sometimes, he can feel Derek staring in his direction, and sometimes they have decent conversations that last more than back-and-forths. But sometimes, he likes to mess with him.

Stiles leans in front of Derek and catches his attention, tearing it away from the wall.

“Hey, how did you rest? Enjoying your scheduled program?”

“Suck a dick, Stiles,” Derek says lowly, without a lot of heat.

Stiles raises an eyebrow. “Are you offering? There aren’t many choices in the afterlife.” Derek is staring his way, and he says “I mean, not that your dick would be a last resort.”

“Stiles–”

“I mean, I would suck your dick anyday–”

“Shut _up,”_ Derek asserts. “Turn around.”

Stiles flounders for a moment, mouth flapping open like a fish. Then, he cranes his neck to look at where Derek’s gaze is focused. The door to the closet has opened slightly. Stiles can see that it’s brighter in the room than it was when he’d woken up, and there’s a smoke drifting from the small crack. “What?”

For the first time, Stiles feels a pain in his head as he walks over to open the door slowly. He can see nothing beyond the bright light. Stiles feels tired just looking at it.

“Stiles, close the door.”

“Huh?” Stiles asks, vision blurring. “Why? It’s a way out. And it’s not like I cherish your charming company _anyways–_ ”

“Stiles.” The voice wavers in volume, tapering off at the end. Stiles looks back at where Derek sits against the wall, legs bent up and his arm extending out, elbow against his knee. There’s an underlying hint of something pleading there, now. He opens his hand and opens his mouth once, twice. He looks resilient when he opens it the third time. “I think if you go out there, there’s no way back.” Stiles can hear _don’t leave me alone_ in his voice.

The way forward is wispy and consumed with fog. He looks between Derek, crisp and the box of blinding light, then seals it shut, locks it for good measure. It hits like a punch in the chest when the lock clicks but then the pain in his head is gone.

Derek seems to huff a breath and when Stiles collapses against the wall he makes room for Stiles to take the corner.

Stiles breathes. It feels empty and shallow. “Do you think we’re stuck here?”

There’s the telltale dull thud of Derek knocking his head against the wall, the only part of the room they can lean against without going straight through. Stiles leans against Derek just to feel the almost-human touch, and this time Derek doesn’t shiver away at the cold feeling. “I don’t know,” he says.

–

Another week passes by, and Stiles feels like he’s about to lose what’s left of his mind. Things have been better between Derek and him, and they are something close to friends. Derek talks more sometimes when he’s in a good mood, which, to be fair, isn’t too often.

But he’s starting to lose his memory, is the thing. “I don’t remember what I look like though, Derek.”

Derek doesn’t look up from his fingernails, “Brown hair, upturned nose, moles–”

“That’s not what I mean! I can’t remember how we got here, I can’t–” He looks around the blank room and feels nothing but emptiness.

Derek seems to get with the program and he holds out a hand towards Stiles. “Come here, Stiles.”

“I don’t need you to hit me,” Stiles protests, pulling his hand against his own chest, and Derek scoffs.

“I’m not going to _hit you._ You need to calm down.” His gaze goes gentle for probably the first time in weeks. Stiles doesn’t know if it took him panicking to get to Derek, or if Derek is going as crazy as he is. “Come here,” he says, though, and Stiles does.

Derek tugs Stiles’s hands until Stiles is sitting cross-legged in front of him. “Open your eyes.” Stiles does, and Derek is closer than he’s ever been before. His eyes could be such a bright green, but they’re pale and sickly right now. If Stiles had any breath left in him it would be sucked right out. With a tilt of his head, Derek scoots a bit closer, and Stiles leans into him.

Derek’s voice goes deeper. He clears his throat. “Sit here, and tell me your name.”

Stiles shudders when their lips seem to brush over the other’s, but he’s closed his eyes again and can never trust his senses nowadays. “Stiles Stilinski.” He says without thinking, closing his eyes, leaning into Derek’s touch. “Stilinski–”

His eyes pop open at the same time as Derek’s. “Stilinski,” Derek says, face shooting back. “The sheriff?”

“My dad,” Stiles says, just as confused, with a flash of pain behind his eyes. Everything goes quiet for once, even the thoughts in the back of his mind.

They stare at each other for a while. Derek clears his throat, leaning away from Stiles’s touch. “Well,” he mutters, “it’s a start.”

–

“I think I remember something from when I died.” Stiles thinks it’s a few days after his memory-loss instance but it’s hard to keep track.

“Yeah?” Derek asks. Stiles has been noticing that Derek, instead of turning away, leans in when he speaks now. It’s a comforting reassurance. Stiles prefers him like this.

“I think I remember my chest hurting. I keep getting quick flashbacks to it.” Sometimes he thinks that’s what his phantom ache is, but he doesn’t say that out loud.

Derek blinks at him and then he nods. “Me too. I get flashes of blue, and everything feeling hot.”

“We’re getting better at this,” Stiles grins.

Derek’s mouth begins to turn up in response (the first smile Stiles has seen), but then Derek’s chest concaves and he bends over with a grunt of pain. “Derek?”

Derek yells and it echoes around them, and Stiles goes to try and take hold of his bicep, but Derek continues screaming and Stiles phases right through him. “What’s wrong? Derek!”

“Derek Hale,” Derek stares shakily into the distance and he’s shuddering. All at once, his body starts fading away, and Stiles can’t look anywhere but at Derek’s disappearing feet.

“Derek, no hey, don’t leave me,” he says desperately when he catches on to what’s going on. He can’t grab onto him no matter how hard he tries, and Derek is looking off into the distance but all at once their eyes meet and Stiles can see the genuine fear in his eyes as he starts shimmering some more. Stiles feels a burning in his chest, the first real, tangible feeling he’s felt in days, then a startling shock that forces a shout out of him. It tingles to his toes, and then it’s gone, then it’s there again.

Like a balloon, Stiles’s vision blacks out with a pop and he can’t feel Derek or anything; all he knows is a steady _beep-beep-beep_ and a cacophony of sound. The buzzing is back, but louder and more intrusive, and his skin hurts something bad. He passes out to “ _we’ve got him_.”

–

_Stiles Stilinski. 21 years old, living with my single dad. I go to college a town over. A fire broke out in the house I was cleaning for some extra cash with the family still inside. Light and smoke, unable to move past the living room because the doorway collapsed behind me._

_I remember my burning lungs and the crumbling of plaster walls, then darkness._

His finger twitches, and then he’s waking up. When he comes to, with his full memories, the room is full of noise. Some high pitched and droning, others deep and pausing, low and soothing.

It takes a moment to realize that what he’s hearing are _voices._

More than one, or maybe some aren’t voices. One of them sounds suspiciously like his dad, and it’s enough for him to shake his head– his body barely moves this time though, less floating and weighted down; he feels almost too fatigued to move, but his _dad–_

“Stiles?” the voice says and Stiles can muster the energy to open his eyes finally and look into the dim ceiling lights above him.

“Dad,” he says with a sigh of relief, because this must be the hospital. It comes out like a croak, but there’s a hand over his own and even though he feels like crap, Stiles thinks he might cry because it’s the first touch besides Derek’s that he’s felt in what seems like forever.

Derek. Stiles blinks his eyes and cranes his neck as much as he can. “Dad,” his voice flutters, “dad, you need to–” there are tubes in his nose to help him breathe, and a mask over his face, but he tries to say, “Find Derek, find Derek.” Even to him it sounds garbled and confused.

“Hey, you’re okay,” his dad hushes. “You’re waking up and you’re on some medication that’ll make you tired as all hell. Just get some sleep, I’ll be here.”

Stiles tries to protest with all of his being, but his eyelids don’t agree with him, and soon everything is black without light again.

–

His dad isn’t there when he wakes next. This time, he can lift his head, but just barely. Someone is lifting his arm up to check what he assumes is his IV and it’s a young female nurse. The rest of the room is empty, and Stiles instantly recognizes the room format right away. There’s no closet, and there’s a lot of posters and machinery, but the walls and floor are exactly the same.

“What–” Stiles croaks, but the mask muffles his words. The nurse makes a humming noise and takes the mask off so he can speak. “What happened?” What he wants to say is _How did I die?_ and _How am I back?_ But that’s the most he can get out before he’s taken over by violent coughing.

“Do you remember anything from before?” Stiles nods his head. The fire. “You got stuck on the first floor and collapsed from inhaling smoke. Your heart stopped because you breathed in too much and strained too hard; it took them so long to find you. We had to resuscitate you twice.” She is busy filling out a chart, and her eyes flicker over to him as she offers a tiny smile.

“That sounds,” Stiles pauses, sucking in a breath, “Lovely.” She smiles gently and places the mask back on his face.

“You gave your father a good scare, for sure. The second time, it was harder to bring you back. Took nearly five minutes. Want some water?” Stiles nods gratefully and takes the small plastic cup from her, removing the mask with his IV-hand. His hand is still slightly grimy and she helps him sit up, moving the bed.

“There was also a boy here to visit you, multiple times,” she adds, fluffing his pillows.

“Scott,” Stiles breathes, and the tubes in his nose are constricting and annoying, but he also thinks if he tried to take the effort in to breathe on his own too much, his esophagus would burn like when he ate an overheated oven pizza one time (okay, more than one time).

“That kid is devoted to you. He left to go get food but there’s no doubt he’ll be back any time now.”

She checks his vitals and then leaves him alone in the room where he fiddles with the remote and moves his head up and down.

–

Scott sneaks him some jello when he comes back and hugs him more times than he can count, but it’s welcome. Then his dad comes, and that is harder to cope with. Stiles realizes there are some minor burn marks on his legs and that his foot is wrapped up because he had burnt the bottom from stepping on the splitting-hot linoleum. The sheriff takes hold of the bandaged skin and he keeps nodding like he’s trying to force himself not to cry.

The hard part is that Stiles remembers everything from before, including Derek. He doesn’t bring it up to anyone, though, not even Scott. He does convince his dad to check the death records within the past week, however (which is very illegal but his dad is used to him by now), and as he pages through, he sees _Derek Hale_ in bold print.

His heart beats once, hard.

Time of death: 11:54 PM.

He slams the folder closed and shoves it back at the sheriff and says he wants to go to sleep.

–

The recovery is pretty difficult at first. Stiles insists on trying to walk himself places, even though his feet are still on the mend. It makes him feel winded much quicker than usual, and the hospital is making him take an inhaler for it.

“You know what’s crazy?” Scott says, walking him to the bathroom anyways, and he’s the only one that Stiles will let swing an arm around his side.

Stiles curses as his tight skin stretches under the bandages. “Yeah?”

Scott smiles; it looks a bit sad. “I thought you were gone for a while. You died, dude.” Stiles stops to catch his breath. “I never thought I’d be so glad to hear you complaining so much.” He ducks the punch in the arm Stiles throws at him and Stiles lets himself be led the rest of the way, because just that has taken all of the energy out of him.

–

Stiles sneaks out of his room instead of pressing the nurse’s button to go to the bathroom for the third time tonight. He silently curses the fact that they have him drinking so much water, but it’s useful for his body to catch up.

It’s around midnight, and the night-shift nurses look at him curiously, but he points down the hallway with the bathroom, and they look away quick enough. He’s not attached to the IV stand anymore, at least, so all he has to do is hold his gown closed in the back and try to tie it closed tighter. He feels like he’s about to collapse from exhaustion because his trips are the most exercise he gets besides therapy.

He’s turning the corner and not paying attention the first few steps around, so of course he barrels straight into another patient. He almost goes down, feet exploding with pain as he stomps down, trying to catch his balance. The other guy holds him up by his biceps and Stiles feels a startling sense of deja vu.

“Stiles?”

“Derek,” Stiles breathes out in shock. Derek has a long burn mark down his neck and he looks just as tired as Stiles does, but it’s still _him_. He is attached to a machine, but not an IV one. This one seems to be keeping track of his heart rate; right now, it’s going a mile a minute, with Stiles’s to match.

“I thought, I thought you were gone,” Stiles says in the dark, and Derek, shaking his head, pulls Stiles into his chest, holding on tight. His biceps are shaking weakly, and Stiles isn’t going anywhere. “It said you were dead.”

“What said I was dead?” Derek mutters, mouth against Stiles’s hairline.

“The death records for the hospital, they said you died.” Stiles takes hold of Derek’s face, and god, there’s stubble that scratches against his palms and he’s real, he’s _real._ The nurses are mumbling behind him but he can’t look away from Derek.

Derek frowns. “I did die. I… I’m a firefighter, apparently. I went into a house to save someone and an electrical cord sprang out, stopped my heart.” That explains the machine that keeps increasing in tempo. “They got me back at midnight, kept me alive with CPR until they got me here.”

Stiles sucks in a gasp. Midnight. “We came back at the same time.” Firefighter. “I died in a fire, too. I was stuck on the first floor.”

“Boyd said he pulled a man out and he was torn up because he was already too close to dead to save.” Derek is touching his face now, and Stiles has to have a stupid look on his face. “He said you were trying to break the window open when you passed out, you stubborn idiot.”

Stiles smiles at his tone. “Hey, well you died too so it wasn’t just me being an idiot–”

He goes soft as their mouths meet and his limbs feel like they automatically turn to jelly. Both hands move to cup Derek’s face and he leans back against the wall so Derek can push against him. It supports them both, which is extremely useful because they’re still barely alive.

He can’t believe that somehow they were both in the same place at the same time, but he grabs Derek closer because he doesn’t want to be away from him at all. Derek’s mouth is gentle and he has both arms caging Stiles in (but they could be just holding him up) and the machine goes beep-beep-beep. Stiles’s throat jumps and he swings both arms around Derek’s neck to pull him in closer.

“I’m so relieved that you’re okay,” Derek says against his mouth, and Stiles can only smile against his lips. He feels warm and there’s no trace of a chill anymore. The nurses are scolding them with confused expressions because they’ve found them in the hallway and not in their beds. Stiles takes hold of his wrist and leans their foreheads together.

“Thanks for keeping me company while I found my way back.”


End file.
